Dyngus Day Slays Anderson Cooper; 'Jaws' Gets a Bigger Boat

We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today: What Hillary Clinton heard after the Bin Laden raid, a regional custom sends Anderson Cooper around the bend, and Jaws is getting prettied up.

First-person recollections of the Bin Laden raid from people who watched it unfold will never stop being compelling. Already, the accounts are growing more textured and layered: those who were in the White House that night seem to be getting more comfortable talking about what they experienced before and after the operations. Hillary Clinton talked about the raid at the U.S. Naval Academy last week, and it's absolutely riveting, just her up there talking about how she could hear the students at neighboring George Washington University spreading the news after the president's speech. It's a detail that sticks. [via CNN]

Anderson Cooper suffered a major attack of the giggles last night during a segment on Dyngus Day, a Polish celebration marking the end of Lent. It sounds snarky, the white-haired man cracking up at folks in Buffalo ringing in Dyngus Day, but all parties accept the word Dyngus is inherently hilarious, so it's fine. Buffalo's even extended an invitation for Cooper to participate in "the 2013 Dyngus Day experience." [via CNN]

Jaws is getting the Blu-Ray restoration treatment, with the finished product arriving in stores in September. On the one hand we're excited for the improved sound, because it means we'll probably hear a few of Robert Shaw's mumbly nautical insults for the first time. But part of the appeal of Jaws is that it's scratched, scruffy and full of continuity mistakes. It looks like an overbudget movie where nothing is working the way it's supposed to. That's part of the charm. It's also why the scene at the end where Roy Scheider straps on the guns to kill the fish himself will never stop being thrilling and intoxicating and perfect. He's jerryrigging the movie's climax out of found objects. What we're saying is, hopefully Spielberg will resist the urge to tinker. This isn't Star Wars. It doesn't need to be vacuum-sealed and shimmery. A Jaws without scenes where the sky goes from sunny to stormy in the middle of a conversation is no Jaws at all. [via digitalfreaknyc]

Kinect, Microsoft's motion-sensing device isn't just for gamers and TA's who want to dramatically point at things: it also has practical uses, like playing a four-story pipe organ. What an age to be alive. [via synaecide]

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Ray Gustini is the author of Lucky Town, a forthcoming book about sports in Washington, D.C. He is a former staff writer for The Atlantic Wire.